Journey with us now to the bizarre world of Middle Eastern soap operas, won¡¯t you?

Today, courtesy of MEMRI TV, we have clips from a show titled ¡°Stories from Before the Verses Came Down.¡± Produced in Jordan and aired on Saudi Arabia¡¯s Iqra TV in February 2005, this soap opera chronicles the schemes of the Elders of Zion as they plot to destroy Muhammad.

Today¡¯s episode is a freakish blend of voodoo and antisemitism, along with a bit of classic blood libel, as the evil Jewish sorcerers (wearing gigantic Star of David medallions and laughing maniacally, to help identify them) conspire to get rid of the upstart Muhammad by stealing some of his hair with the help of a Jewish servant boy, making a voodoo doll out of dough (we never see the doll because representations of Muhammad are forbidden), and piercing it with eleven needles.

The following are excerpts from the Jordanian-produced soap opera "Stories from before the Verses Came Down", which aired on Iqra TV during February 2005.

Labid: Great sage, I see you have joined forces with Satan and his sorcery.

Huyay: I am willing to bow before him and even worship him if he gets rid of this Muhammad for me.

Labid: Relax, Abu Safiya, Relax. You've got what you wanted. No one can resist or reject my spells.

Huyay: I want to see, Labid Ibn Al-A'sam. Let my see it with my eyes, not just with words.

Labid: When Labid promises, he delivers.

Kinana: We hope so, Labid. We hope so.

Labid: Bring me a lock of Muhammad's hair, and make me a statue in the shape of Muhammad out of dough. Take this comb and get Muhammad to use it.

Huyay: Dough we have, since food is abundant in Jewish homes. But how can we get the hair, Kinana?

Kinana: This is where our hypocrites play a role – or our young Jewish boys. They will comb him with this comb and bring us his hair.

Huyay: You are right. Now I remember – we have a young Jewish boy who works for Muhammad. He is a smart boy.

Kinana: Let him bring us the hair.

Labid: Off you go. Finish your work.

Huyay: Get on with it, Ibn Al-A'sam. We've got what you asked for.

Kinana: Here is the comb with Muhammad's lock of hair. We kept it safe. This box contains the statue in the shape of Muhammad.

Labid: Well done. Well done, Jews. Now you've fallen into our hands, Muhammad. Now that you are in the hands of the Jews, we shall see whether there's a god protecting you.

Kinana: What are you going to do, holy man?

Labid: What will I do? You will see what I'll do. Muhammad will regret the day his mother gave birth to him.

Huyay: Can a Muslim fall into the hands of Jews and survive?!

Kinana: You don't have to teach us who we are, uncle.

Labid: This is what I have in store for him. These are eleven needles. This needle goes into his heart.

Huyay: Ouch! You hurt me in the heart!

Labid: This one goes in his right eye. This one goes into his left eye. This one goes into his liver. And this one goes into his leg. Kinana, bring me the comb and the lock of hair. We should thread each hair through a needle and then tie them in a knot with this string here. Now we have eleven knots.

Kinana: Could you explain what you did, so we can understand?

Labid: I've appointed a demon to protect each knot. I have gathered them from all corners of the earth.

Huyay: And how will this help, Labid?

Labid: If Muhammad is a sorcerer, he will know we cast a spell on him. He might be able to untie one or two knots, but no more.

Kinana: And if he unties them all?

Labid: It is impossible with sorcery. Impossible!

Kinana: Why?

Labid: Because I will bury it myself in an abandoned Jewish well called Be'er Dharwan.

Huyay: Well done, Labid Al-A'sam.

Labid: Where are you going, Jews?

Kinana: Anything else, Labid?

Labid: The most important thing – the dinars. The dinars for my work, Jews.

Huyay: We thought you were giving it as a present to the God of Moses.

Labid But I deserve it more than the God of Moses.

Huyay: By God! If I did not know the strength of your spells and powers, you wouldn't have seen a single dinar from me.

Kinana: Uncle, I think that the greatest demons are afraid of you, because they can learn from you.

Mein Kampf is a best-seller in most Arab countries. Recently Palestinian TV aired a sermon by a cleric calling for the destruction of the Jews. And Arab TV constantly broadcasts such dramas designed to incite hatred towards Jews and Israel.

And when the next generation of young Arabs straps on bombs and blows up Jews, you'll probably be able to twist your intellect and contort your conscience so that you'll be able to lay blame on Israel.

and again, Mithridates, you exhibit the leftist's typical need to find moral equivalancy (anti-semitic shows DESIGNED to incite hatred EQUALS Comboy and Indian movies)....why not have some tea with Irene "gitmo+gulag" Khan.

The solution to problems is just so easy if you can simply yin and yang yourself into a moral equivalent stupor of stupidity.

You know, when I see sundubuman's co-ethnics let their sideburns grow long and curly, wrap paper boxes on their heads and bob back and forth before a brick wall while crying, I think that's just as bizarre.

I am concerned, actually. I told the kids at the hagwon downstairs today that I didn't approve of their Japanese-killing game they were playing on the computer, and I would tell any Arab in one of those countries the same thing if they were having fun watching a tv show that portrayed Jews that way.

On the other hand, I don't see it as a mark of civilization or lack thereof, which is why I pointed out that we enjoy tv shows and movies that are just as bad. The only difference is that the natives portrayed in those western movies have almost all been wiped out and don't really have much of a voice left to oppose them. That's what makes them easy to ignore.

The term anti-Semitism has normally referred to prejudice towards Jews alone, and this was formerly the only use of this word for more than a century. It does not traditionally refer to prejudice toward other people who speak Semitic languages (e.g. Arabs or Assyrians). Bernard Lewis says that "Anti-Semitism has never anywhere been concerned with anyone but Jews."[1] (http://middleeastinfo.org/library/lewis_antisemitism.html) However, in recent decades some people have argued that the term should be extended to include prejudice against Arabs, since Arabic is a Semitic language; these arguments are commonly made in the context of accusations of Arab anti-Semitism. Though this usage has not been widely adopted, one example is this October 16/17, 2004 statement by Ralph Nader in Counterpunch: "There is, as you always ignore, aggressive anti-Semitism against defenseless Arabs in many places in the world..."[2] (http://www.counterpunch.org/nader10162004.html)

Some question the usefulness of applying the term more generally to all semitic groups on the basis that there are few instances of prejudice against both Arabs and Jews to the exclusion of other races or nationalities, and in fact many more instances of antagonism between Jews and Arabs than of a specific bias against both groups together. Lewis writes "the term Semite has no meaning as applied to groups as heterogeneous as the Arabs or Jews." And, as has been pointed out by Neil J. Kressel, "In any event, nothing is gained from applying the anti-Semitism label to anti-Arab discrimination, abhorrent in its own right, except to confuse matters and take attention away from anti-Jewish hostility" [3] (http://www.ainsof.com/urgent.htm).

James Zogby argues, however, that both Arabs and Jews have been subject to the same prejudice and uniformly treated by Western society as alien and hostile, viewed as prone to conspiracy, and seen as usurpers of Western wealth and threats to Western civilization. Zogby draws parallels between political cartoons depicting Jews as the fat grotesque banker and Arabs as the obese oil sheik. He argues that efforts to counter anti-Semitism must be broadened to include the "other anti-Semitism" so that the same outrage displayed toward anti-Jewish bigotry will occur for anti-Arab and anti-Muslim stereotypes. [4] (http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=magazine.article&issue=soj9811&article=981112)

Despite the use of the prefix "anti," the terms Semitic and Anti-Semitic are not antonyms. To avoid the confusion of the misnomer, many scholars on the subject (such as Emil Fackenheim of the Hebrew University) now favor the unhyphenated term antisemitism. Yehuda Bauer articulated this view in his writings and lectures: (the term) "Antisemitism, especially in its hyphenated spelling, is inane nonsense, because there is no Semitism that you can be anti to." [5] (http://humwww.ucsc.edu/jewishstudies/docs/YBauerLecture.pdf), also in his A History of the Holocaust, p.52)

An alternative term, "Judeophobia", stands for fear or irrational hatred of Jews. It was invented by Leon Pinsker and first appeared in his 1882 pamphlet Autoemancipation (text). As a professional physician, Pinsker preferred the medical term because he was convinced that pathological, irrational phobia may explain this ancient hatred:

"Judeophobia is a variety of demonopathy... this ghost is not disembodied like other ghosts but partakes of flesh and blood, must endure pain inflicted by the fearful mob who imagines itself endangered... To sum up then, to the living the Jew is a corpse, to the native a foreigner, to the homesteader a vagrant, to the proprietary a beggar, to the poor an exploiter and a millionaire, to the patriot a man without a country, for all a hated rival."

Yeah, it's one of those words that doesn't mean exactly what it should. Kind of like marriage, depending on the country. Doesn't that come from the Latin word for husband?
I heard once that the word 'cleave' is the only word in our language that has two meanings, diametrically opposite each other.

Whether being 'anti-Christian' or 'anti-Jewish' goes against Islam depends which part of the Koran you choose to quote. Unfortunately, the verses of the Koran that were revealed to Mohammed at a later date, 'abrogate' the earlier verses, and these later verses are far more violent, intolerant and discriminatory than earlier ones.

Quote:

The Qur'an identifies these as special people.

Only in respect that they are spared the fate of idolaters such as Hindus and Bhuddists, who face a choice of conversion or death. Moreover, they are not accorded equal rights in Islamic law, but a subservient existence of dhimmitude, whereby they may not practice their faith publicly, must pay a special tax (jizya), and even wear special marks on their clothes to differentiate them from muslims. Now what does that remind you of?